price-dividend ratio

Price/performance ratio

In economics and engineering, the price/performance ratio refers to a product's ability to deliver performance, of any sort, for its price. For instance, if you have a whole day to travel 100 km, spending $50 to do the journey in two hours is a better price/performance ratio than spending $105 to do the journey in one hour.

Price/performance is often written as price-performance. Even though this term would seem to be a straightforward ratio, when price performance is improved, better, or increased, it actually refers to the performance divided by the price, in other words exactly the opposite ratio to rank a product as having an increased Price/performance. To avoid such confusion, the word ratio is often dropped or the dash used instead. Technical and news publications are often sloppy in their coverage of changes in these matters.